The Scrappy Marketer

Email & White Paper Marketing Idea from Carolee's Creations

A great email marketing idea recently arrived in my inbox from Carolee's Creations.  Essentially they've created a whitepaper to address a common concern for their target audience  (In scrapbook speak...they created an idea sheet to help use your stash.)  Then they sent out an email blast to let people know the white paper was available.  Georgana also posted about it on her blog.

According to Wikipedia, a white paper "is an authoritative report. White papers are used to educate customers, collect leads for a company or help people make decisions."  Whitepapers are typically offered by companies as a marketing tool.  They are written in article format, presenting a problem, then offering a solution.  That solution is usually points to a product or service that the company offers.

In this case, the white paper/tipsheet/idea sheet [PDF] addresses how to get past "Christmas Card Chagrin" - "that sick gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach [when] thinking about the expense" of sending out handmade Christmas cards. The four-page PDF describes creative ways to work past that problem, including specific examples (with sketches) of 15 cards created using one sheet of stickers, four sheets of cardstock, and one stamp (all Carolee's Creation products).

Try this marketing technique yourself!  Think about what concerns your target market has, and put together a white paper describing how to solve it, and how you can help.  Then send out an email and post to your blog to tell everyone that the paper is available.

A Scrappy Marketer's Hat Tip to Carolee's Creations for this marketing "hat trick" - marketing by white paper, email newsletter, AND blog.

Newsletter Marketing: Reward Your Ambassadors

I subscribe to lots of e-newsletters, to keep up with industry buzz and happenings, as well as to get promotional ideas.  I noticed a cool promotional technique in the recent e-newsletter from ScrapWords.com.

In her newsletter, owner Leslie Ackman offered incentives to helping her build buzz about her site:

Scrapwords is a very new community on the Web...With that being said, it is TOUGH to get our name out there! So far you can find me in all the major scrap mags and websites but that's not enough!! I need YOU!

Please tell your friends about us and send them our way. For every person that you send to Scrapwords that creates a Blog, posts on the forums, etc. I'll give you $2.00 credit in the Store. Send me 5 people that become active on the site and you'll get $10 bucks to spend...send me 10 people that become active you'll get $20 bucks!!  If you are interested in participating in this program e-mail me.

**An active member create a Blog, posts at least 5 times in that Blog and posts in our Forums at least 25 times.

I like these points about this promotion:

• Leslie recognizes that she needs to build traffic for her site, so she asks her loyal customers for help.
• To encourage her customers to help her, she offers an enticement.
• That enticement comes from her own inventory, minimizing the cost of the promotion, plus there's no initial investment while hoping the promotion produces results.  It's almost like promotion on consignment - you don't pay until you get the results you want.
• She provided tangible measurement of what she is looking for - how many posts a new site member must make to make their "ambassador" eligible for the reward.
• AND she used her e-newsletter to spread the word about the promotion.

A couple of suggestions if you're considering a similar "Be My Ambassador" promotion - definitely announce it in your e-newsletter, as Leslie did, but also post about it on your blog, on your message board (if applicable), and on the homepage of your website.  If you're going to spread the word about something, spread it as far as you can with all the tools that you have!

A Scrappy Marketer's Hat Tip to Leslie!  Way to be an Ambassador-Maker!